trilobite
Trilobites (; meaning "three lobes") are extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the ...
s in the order
Phacopida
Phacopida ("lens-face") is an order of trilobites that lived from the Late Cambrian to the Late Devonian. It is made up of a morphologically diverse assemblage of taxa in three related suborders.
Characteristics
Phacopida had 8 to 19 thorac ...
that existed during the lower
Ordovician
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya. ...
in what is now
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...
. It was described by Pribyl and Vanek in 1985, and the
type species
In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen( ...
is ''Courtessolium prepater'', which was originally described under the genus '' Pateraspis'' by Courtessole and Pillet in 1975, and was later renamed under the genus '' Pseudosphaerexochus''. The new generic name, ''Courtessolium'', honours one of the original authors of the species.
It was described from the Tremadoc erratic in
Hérault
Hérault (; oc, Erau, ) is a department of the region of Occitania, Southern France. Named after the Hérault River, its prefecture is Montpellier. It had a population of 1,175,623 in 2019.Available Generic Names for Trilobites P.A. Jell and J.M. Adrain.
Paleobiology Database
The Paleobiology Database is an online resource for information on the distribution and classification of fossil animals, plants, and microorganisms.
History
The Paleobiology Database (PBDB) originated in the NCEAS-funded Phanerozoic Marine Paleo ...